047: Tomorrow

Vanessa didn't sleep.

She lay in the dark replaying four words until they lost their shape. *I already do.*

Adrian had said it so plainly. Like a fact. Like something he'd decided a long time ago and simply hadn't bothered to mention.

She told herself it didn't matter.

It mattered.

By six she gave up on sleep entirely and sat at her kitchen table with her phone face-down in front of her, as though not looking at it might undo the message still sitting there.

*Tomorrow, we talk.*

Tomorrow was today.

The address came at nine. No explanation. Just a pin dropped on a map, a small café on the edge of the financial district, far enough from Blackwood Group and Sterling Holdings that no one from either building would recognize her walking in.

She almost didn't go.

But not going meant waiting. Waiting meant wondering. And Vanessa had spent three months wondering who knew what she'd done — whether it was Adrian's driver, or the assistant she'd bribed, or someone at the clinic who'd talked when they shouldn't have.

She needed a name. Even a bad one was better than none.

She arrived at nine fifty. The café was half empty, quiet enough that the espresso machine sounded like a threat. She chose a table near the back and ordered nothing.

At ten exactly, someone sat down across from her.

Vanessa's breath caught.

"You," she said.

Marcus Reyes folded his hands on the table like a man arriving for a job interview, not an ambush. She hadn't seen him in almost two years — not since he'd left Sterling Holdings under circumstances everyone had agreed, publicly, not to discuss.

"Me," he said.

"You're the one who's been texting me?"

"I'm the one who's been texting you." He didn't smile, exactly, but something in his face suggested he was enjoying this more than he let on. "And the one who called Damian Blackwood two nights ago."

Vanessa's hands went still on the table.

"Why?"

"Because Elena Vale needs to remember she isn't safe just because she's smiling again." He said it evenly, the way he used to deliver bad quarterly numbers to a room that didn't want to hear them. "And because you, Vanessa, are going to help me remind her."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do." He finally leaned back. "You had Adrian's assistant delete the message logs the week Elena disappeared. You made sure nobody at Sterling Holdings asked questions about where the transfer money actually went. You've been very useful to a great many people, Vanessa. That's not an accusation. It's a résumé."

She felt the color drain out of her face.

"What do you want."

"Access." He said it simply. "You still have Adrian's trust. Enough of it, anyway. I want to know what he knows about Elena's family — what he's found, what he's guessing, what he's planning to do with it once his ego catches up to his greed. And I want to know before Damian Blackwood does."

"Why does it matter what Adrian knows? Elena left him."

"Because Adrian isn't the danger here." Marcus's voice dropped, and for the first time something colder moved behind his eyes. "He's a distraction. A convenient one, honestly — everyone's so busy watching him grovel that no one's paying attention to who actually benefits when the Vale name gets dragged back into headlines."

Vanessa's mouth had gone dry. "Who benefits?"

Marcus studied her for a long moment, as if deciding how much rope to give her.

"Ask yourself who profited the last time people thought Elena Vale was dead," he said. "Then ask yourself why that person would want the whole city talking about her again."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting today." He stood, buttoning his jacket with the unhurried calm of a man who had never once in his life been in a hurry. "Consider this an invitation, Vanessa. Help me, and whatever it is you're afraid people will find out about you stays buried. Don't, and I stop being the only one who knows."

He left a card on the table. No name. Just a number.

"Text me when you have something," he said. "Don't wait for the next anonymous call to remind you why you should."

Vanessa sat alone for a long time after he'd gone, the card sitting between her hands like something radioactive.

She thought about walking straight to Adrian's office and telling him everything — the messages, the meeting, Marcus's name. Confession dressed up as loyalty. It would almost be a relief.

But Marcus hadn't threatened her outright. He hadn't needed to. He'd simply reminded her, gently, precisely, exactly how much she had to lose.

She picked up the card.

Somewhere across the city, in an office with a view Vanessa used to imagine for herself, Adrian was probably still thinking about a woman he'd already lost twice — first to indifference, then to someone better. He didn't know that the past he thought he'd buried with her had just resurfaced with a name and a number and a very specific interest in his ex-wife's inheritance.

Vanessa slid the card into her pocket.

She didn't know yet who she was more afraid of — Marcus, or the version of herself capable of doing whatever he asked next.

But she knew one thing with total certainty as she walked back out into the cold late-morning light.

Elena's phone call in the night hadn't been a warning.

It had been the opening move.